After months of grousing, broken promises and delays, the repaving of Thepprasit Road is still not complete.
Pattaya Mayor Poramet Ngampichet inspected the roadway improvement project Feb. 22 and met with the lead contractor who said that they will begin rebuilding Thepprasit’s sidewalks on Feb. 24. That work will take another seven weeks.
Thepprasit roadwork began in November 2021 in a 124-million-baht project originally set for completion in May this year.
That obviously won’t happen and now the contractor is promising to finish the job by July.
Once complete, the project will see new drainage pipes installed on both sides of Thepprasit Road over six kilometers, ending at Sukhumvit Road. New sidewalks will be built and power and utility lines buried under the center of the road.
Pipe work was done on half of Thepprasit in November and the roadway reopened to traffic, but users complained that the roadway was uneven, with sewer grates seven centimeters higher than the rest of the road. Social media exploded with false claims that that the road was finished, but left in bad shape by city hall. In fact, the final layer of asphalt wasn’t planned on being poured until both sides of the road were done.
Chonburi’s governor got involved and told city hall that leaving the road in such shape for months was unacceptable. In November, Deputy Mayor Manote Nongyai promised Pattaya would immediately repave the rough half of the road.
Then came the delays and broken promises, with work finally begun six weeks later. Another vow to have the work done before the new year’s holidays also went unfulfilled.
Now work will continue on the other half of Thepprasit with the contractor saying the roadway should be reopened, but not completed, by Songkran, except at the far ends of the roads, where new intersections must be built.
